There's no better way to speed up and upgrade a laptop than to replace its mechanical drive with an SSD (Solid State Drive). Sure, you can defragment your hard drive in Windows 10, but it won't improve your peformance like an SSD would.
It's a no-brainer, but if the thought of reinstalling Windows 10 and all of your programs and then tweaking all of their settings gives you the chills, don't worry. In an hour or two, you can easily be up and running with a clone of your current system -- except now your laptop will have blazing performance.
Here's how to do it.
Before You Begin: Check Upgradability
The process of upgrading your laptop to SSD is fairly simple if you have easy access to your hard drive via a removable panel on the bottom of the laptop. If you have an Ultrabook or your laptop doesn't have that kind of easy upgrade access (e.g., the bottom panel is sealed), it's a whole different ballgame, and you'll need to consult your laptop manual for instructions on getting to that drive and finding the right replacement drive. Otherwise, this tutorial will help those of you with the removable panel through preparing your laptop, cloning your system, and making the big swap.
Find the right SSD form factor and interface. The other thing you'll want to check before you go out and buy a replacement SSD is your drive's form factor; you need to make sure the drive will fit in the laptop. Most laptops have 2.5-inch drives, but ultraportable notebooks may use the 1.8-inch disk size. Also, even 2.5-inch drives can have different thicknesses-- 7 mm or 9.5 mm--and different interfaces (SATA or IDE, usually in laptops from 2008 or before). Laptops most widely use 2.5-inch SATA drives , but you should check your laptop manual or specifications to make sure you buy the right size SSD with the proper interface. Alternatively, you may be able to find this information by visiting Crucial's Advisor Tool or looking at your current drive's label: Open the access panel and look on the drive itself to see if it says 2.5-inch and SATA and what thickness you need. Generally, 7mm, 2.5-inch SATA SSDs will fit even in the 9.5mm slots and some come with spacers for a tighter fit.
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What You'll Need
An SSD, of course. In addition to getting a drive with the right form factor and interface, you'll want to get an SSD with at least enough room for the Windows partition and any system recovery partitions. A 250GB Samsung SSD is currently about $89 on Amazon and a 500GB version is about $120. For most people, the 250GB drive should be fine, but the 500GB one offers more flexibility, for only a little more investment.
An external enclosure or adapter to connect that SSD to your laptop. For this how-to, we used a StarTech SATA external hard drive enclosure , although there's an updated USB 3.0 version you might prefer ($24 on Amazon). Either way, the enclosure comes in handy not just for connecting the SSD for the cloning process, but also afterward to turn your current drive, once it's replaced by the SSD, into an external one for backups and other storage.
Small Phillips screwdriver.
Separate external hard drive (optional). You might need this if you have large folders, such as photos and videos, that might not fit on your SSD, and also to create a full system backup at the start.
(ISO) download page for Harvest Moon - Back to Nature (Sony Playstation). PSX emulator: ePSXe (Windows) OpenEmu (Mac) and download: PSX BIOS. Harvest moon back to nature epsxe indonesia.
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Prepare Your Current Drive for Cloning
First we need to do a little prep work on your current drive.
1. Make a full backup of your system. Create a system image backup in Windows 10 by going to the Control Panel (hit the Win+X keyboard shortcut and select Control Panel), then go to 'Save backup copies of your files with File History' (under System and Security). In the left menu, go to 'System Image Backup' to create a system image on an external drive or network location.
2. Move large folders that don't need to be kept on the SSD. Chances are your hard drive is larger than the SSD you are transferring to (for example, moving from a 500GB HDD with lots of media files to a 120GB SSD). If this is the case, move larger folders--such as those containing your photos, videos, games, and personal documents--to an external drive or other location to make enough space on your drive for cloning to the smaller SSD.
3. Clean up your drive for additional space. This is also the time to uninstall programs you aren't using anymore and delete unnecessary files that you don't want carried over to your SSD. Make one last uncluttering sweep with freeware CCleaner, which deletes old temp files and other space hogs, or at the very least run Windows' disk cleanup (in Windows search -- look for 'disk cleanup,' then choose 'Free up disk space on this PC').
Connect the SSD
Now we'll get the SSD set up for the cloning process.
1. Physically connect the SSD. Place the SSD in the enclosure or connect it to the USB-to-SATA adapter, and then connect it to your laptop with the USB cable.
2. Initialize the SSD. If the SSD doesn't show up on your computer with a new drive letter, head to Windows' Disk Management tool. Bring up Windows search again and look for 'disk management,' then choose 'Create and format hard disk partitions.' In Disk Management, you should see the SSD as a new disk under your current one. If it says 'Not initialized,' right-click on the drive and choose 'Initialize disk.'
3. Resize the current drive partition to be the same size or smaller than the SSD. While you're in Disk Management, check to see if your current disk's primary partition (usually, C:, the one that has Windows and your installed programs) is larger than the SSD. If not, you'll need to shrink the partition so that it and the other system recovery partitions are smaller than the SSD. Right-click on the OS partition and choose 'Shrink…'
In the next window, leave the defaults and click 'Shrink.' This will resize the primary partition so it's smaller and leave the rest of the space as unallocated. Don't worry; during the cloning process, the cloning software will properly resize and allocate extra space to the main partition on your SSD.
At this time, you should restart your computer to make sure that the partition works before cloning.
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Clone Your Hard Drive
How To Change Boot Drive Windows 10
Finally, it's time to clone your drive to the SSD.
1. Install disk cloning software. For this tutorial, we're using EaseUS Todo Backup Free, which is free for personal use, has a user-friendly interface, and also optimizes the migration to an SSD.
2. Select the source and destination drives in the cloning software. In EaseUS Todo Backup, select the 'Clone' option from the main menu. Follow the wizard to select your source disk (your HDD) and your destination (the SSD).
Note in particular that you should tick the 'Optimize for SSD' option when you select the destination drive. This makes sure the sectors are aligned on your SSD and improves your chances of booting from the SSD after the cloning process. (EaseUS notes that it's not necessary to tick the 'sector by sector' option, which copies every sector over, even if they're empty or bad.)
3. Review the layout and start cloning. In the next screen, you'll be able to compare the source drive with your SSD. As you see below, EaseUS automatically adjusts for different-sized drives by using the unallocated space on your current drive (which we created in step 3 of the last section).
Click 'Proceed' then choose 'Shut down computer when the operation completed.' This took us about 45 minutes to complete, but your mileage may vary.
Physically Swap Your Current Drive with the SSD
Now let's remove the old drive and install the SSD.
1. Turn the computer off and remove the back panel. Turn your laptop off and then disconnect both the power cable and any other connected cables -- including the SSD. Then unscrew the back panel and remove it to get access to your hard drive.
2. Look for any screws securing your drive to the laptop. You'll need to unscrew those before you can remove the drive.
3. Lift the old drive up about 30 or 45 degrees and pull it out.
4. In its place, install the SSD and put the back panel on. Install the SSD by doing the reverse of how you removed the HDD: Slide the drive in at an angle and push it firmly into place so it's fully connected to the interface. Then secure it with the screw you removed in the last step and, finally, screw the back panel covering the drive back on.
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Boot Up with the SSD
The moment of truth: Turn your laptop on. If your laptop boots as normal and you see all of your programs and settings just the way they were before (except much faster), all went well.
For one final test to see everything went as planned, let's make sure Windows recognizes your drive as an SSD. Hit Win+S to search for 'defrag' and select 'Defragment and optimize your drives.' In the Optimize Drives window, your drive should be listed as a Solid State Drive. Mission complete!
(By the way, SSDs should not be defragmented. Windows 10 knows this. If it detects your drive as an SSD, instead of defragmenting the drive, it will optimize it for the TRIM command, which improves the performance of your SSD. By default, your drive will be automatically optimized.)
You can now put your old drive in the enclosure and wipe it in Disk Management, perhaps moving your media files to this drive. Just make sure your automated backup system (you have one, right?) covers both your new internal drive and connected external ones.
Another way you can tell the migration worked? You're now booting up, launching programs, and multitasking so much faster than before.
Speed Tests: No Contest
To see just how much switching from an HDD to an SSD would affect performance, we timed how long a Dell Inspiron 15 5000 with 8GB of RAM took to open a Word document with one page of text, a blank Excel spreadsheet and a new instance of Google Chrome. (We ran each test multiple times and took the average.)
The 1TB, 5,400 rpm Seagate HDD that came with the Inspiron took 31.9 seconds to open the Word document, 19.9 seconds to open the Excel spreadsheet and 14 seconds to open Chrome.
With a 250GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD installed, the laptop opened both Word and Excel in 1.8 seconds and Chrome in 1.1 seconds.
Additional contributions by Andrew E. Freedman
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If you’re looking to upgrade your computer to a solid-state drive but don’t want to start everything back up from scratch, here’s how to transfer your data onto your new hard drive.
August 6, 2018 8:52AM EST
August 6, 2018
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If you're still using a traditional, spinning hard disk on your computer, you're missing out. Swapping it out for a solid-state drive (SSD) is one of the best upgrades you can make in terms of speeding up your computer. Your computer will boot faster, programs will launch instantly, and games won't take so long to load.
You could reinstall your Windows installation from scratch, if you wanted to, and start new with a fresh, squeaky-clean system. But while it seems simpler, it's actually more of a hassle. As long as you follow these instructions to the letter, you should be back up and running in no time, with all your data intact.
You'll need a few things before you get started:
What You'll Need: An SSD
Obviously, in order to upgrade to an SSD, you'll need to..well, buy an SSD. We have some recommendations here, though if you're on a pretty strict budget, we have a separate list of cheap SSDs as well. Make sure to buy one big enough to fit all your data—if you have a 500GB hard drive now, you should probably spring for a similarly sized SSD. The only exception is if you're on a desktop computer, and have room for multiple hard drives. In that case, you could store Windows and your programs on the SSD while putting your music, movies, and other data on a second, larger hard disk.
What You'll Need: A USB-to-SATA Dock
During this process, you'll need both your SSD and your old hard drive connected to your computer at the same time. If you're using a laptop with only one hard drive slot, that means you'll need an external adapter, dock, or enclosure that can connect your bare SSD to your computer over USB. (Again, desktop users may not need this if they have room for two drives inside their PC—you can just install it internally alongside your old hard drive.)
What You'll Need: EaseUS Todo Backup for Windows
There are many different drive cloning tools on the market, but when cloning a hard drive to SSD, I recommend EaseUS Todo Backup. Download the free version, enter your email and subscribe to the newsletter to get the download link, but it's worth it, and you can just unsubscribe later. When installing, don't worry about setting your default folder for backups—we won't be using that feature, so you can put it anywhere for now. It'll bug you a few times to upgrade to the paid home version, but just tell it to stick with the free version. That's all you'll need.
Once you've gathered up those necessities, it's time to get started.
Back Up Your Data (and Free Up Space, if Necessary)
Before you start messing with drives and formatting partitions, it's absolutely necessary to back up your data first. A simple misclick can result in you erasing everything, so do not continue until you've backed up all of your data. If you aren't backing up your computer, here's our favorite software for the job—though for today's purposes, copying your important data to an external drive will do in a pinch.
If you're upgrading to an SSD that's smaller than your current hard drive, you'll want to take extra care here. This isn't as common as it once was, thanks to bigger, less expensive SSDs, but if that's the case for you, you'll need to delete some files and free up space on your hard drive before cloning it. Otherwise, your data won't fit. In that case, I recommend making sure that data is backed up to an external hard drive before continuing, unless you're okay with deleting it all permanently. Once your data is safe and secure, continue onto the next step.
Plug in and Initialize Your SSD
Plug your SSD into the SATA-to-USB adapter, and then plug that into your computer. If it's a brand new drive, you probably won't see the drive pop up in Windows Explorer, but don't worry; it just needs to be initialized first. Open the Start menu and type 'partitions' in the search box. Click the 'Create and format hard disk partitions' option, and Disk Management will open. It'll prompt you to initialize the drive using either the GPT or MBR partition table. I'll be using MBR for my SSD, since I have an older motherboard in this PC that doesn't have UEFI, and thus can't boot from GPT disks. If you have a newer PC, you might be able to use GPT, but when in doubt, use MBR.
If you aren't prompted to initialize the drive, and don't see it in Disk Management, double-check that it's properly connected to your computer, and that the enclosure or dock is turned on (if necessary).
Once the drive has been initialized, you should see the drive show up in the bottom pane of Disk Management, as unallocated space. You still won't see it in Windows Explorer, but that's okay, since EaseUS will be able to see it. Close Disk Management and continue to the next step.
Clone Your Hard Drive
Open EaseUS Todo Backup and you'll be greeted with an empty window. Click the 'Clone' icon in the left sidebar—it's the one with two squares, near the bottom—and select the hard disk with your C: drive as the source. Be sure to check the box for the entire Hard Disk, not just the C: partition itself, since you'll need to clone the 'System Reserved' partition as well. Click Next.
On the next page, you'll choose the target disk. In this case, that's your SSD. Again, select the entire disk by checking the box next to 'Hard Disk,' and make absolutely sure you're selecting the SSD, since whatever drive you select in this step will be erased. Thankfully, our SSD is empty, unallocated space, so we don't need to be worried about erasing anything important.
Align Your Partitions
Before moving on, click the 'Advanced Options' button and check the 'Optimize for SSD' button. This is important, since it'll align the partitions in a way that ensures you're getting the maximum speed out of your SSD. Click OK, then click Next. EaseUS will ask to confirm your choice, and give you a preview of how much space will be used on your SSD. Click Proceed to begin the process.
Wait..and Wait, and Wait
This may take a few hours, especially if your hard drive and SSD are rather large. So go binge-watch some Netflix and come back in a while. When it’s done, click the 'Finish' button. You should see your new SSD in Windows Explorer, complete with all your data.
Install Your SSD
Next, shut down your computer. It's time to install that SSD in your computer permanently. If you have a laptop with only one hard drive slot, you'll need to remove your old hard drive and replace it with your SSD. This is a bit different on every laptop, but you can get a general idea of the process with our guide here. If you have a desktop PC with more than one hard drive slot, you can leave your old hard drive in as extra storage, and just install your SSD alongside it.
Reboot From Your New Drive
Once you're finished installing the SSD, you'll need to tell your computer to boot from it. (This may not be necessary on laptops with just one drive, but if you experience problems booting, it can help on some PCs.) Turn your computer on and enter its BIOS/UEFI setup—this is a bit different on every PC, but it'll usually say something like 'Press DEL to enter setup' on the boot screen, so you'll want to press the corresponding key as it starts up.
From there, look for your BIOS' boot options. These will be in a different spot depending on your computer, but once you find them, you'll want to select the option to change the boot sequence. Choose your SSD from the list as the first boot drive, then head back to the BIOS' main menu to exit, saving your settings. Your computer will reboot, and if all went well, it should plop you back into Windows faster than ever before. Open Windows Explorer and check to confirm that your SSD is, in fact, the C: drive. If everything looks good, you're ready to rock, and your computer should feel significantly snappier without having to reinstall a thing.
Buying a Solid State Drive (SSD): Everything You Need to Know